Something went wrong while submitting the form. Please try again.
The financial advisory landscape has seen a surge in advisors transitioning from established wirehouses to independent Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) firms. This movement towards independence is driven by the desire for increased flexibility and greater client-centricity, as well as the potential for enhanced earnings. Notably, recent regulatory changes and technological advancements have further fueled this transition.
Dynasty Financial Partners, LLC (“Dynasty”) hired F2 Strategy to assess the impact they have on their clients’ ability to enhance operating margins, firm valuation, and growth. This research explored characteristics of firms that are in the sweet spot to benefit from the Dynasty platform, and equally as important, those firms that are not. F2 Strategy benchmarked firms within the Dynasty network against U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) registered RIAs’ public data, and assessed several different operating structures’ impact on margin, valuation, and growth. This research uncovers benefits of an outsourced partnership for both existing RIAs and advisors looking to make the step into independence.
The research F2 Strategy conducted between September and December 2023 involved analyzing SEC-registered RIA data, comparing 38 Dynasty Financial Partners firms against 4,669 SEC-registered RIAs. We are defining “Dynasty Firms” as the independent RIAs that utilize Dynasty’s middle and back office support as well as their technology capabilities. The analysis focused on cohorts categorized by average client size and assets under management (AUM).
Additionally, the research formulated three technology operating models, including a Dynasty-comparable model, an all-in-one solution model, and custodial-dependent offerings models, to evaluate their feasibility and impact on operational efficiency.
The research came away with several key findings:
F2 Strategy is a consulting firm helping complex RIA, wealth, bank/trust and family office firms improve their technical capabilities to build exceptional client and advisor experiences. Led by former executives of a wide range of top-rated wealth firms and family offices, F2 Strategy combines their results-driven management strategy with industry-leading, proprietary research to create customized high-tech solutions.
A diverse, creative, and people-centric company, F2 Strategy believes the right technology has the power to support us all to reach the highest level of connection. F2 Strategy was founded in 2016 in San Francisco, has 100+ employees and 3,400 consultants globally.
Dynasty Financial Partners is a provider of technology-enabled wealth management solutions and business services for financial advisory firms primarily focused on serving high net worth and ultra-high net worth clients. Dynasty provides access to a comprehensive platform of software and technology tools, business services and holistic investment management capabilities through an open-architecture platform delivered via a suite of proprietary and third-party technologies. Dynasty’s technology, tools and services provide advisory firms the supported independence to launch their business, scale their operations and grow their firms — both organically and inorganically — while also allowing them to be more focused on and better equipped to serve their clients.
